Peter Dutton says the Coalition has no proposals to reform what students are taught in schools, despite earlier claiming children were being “indoctrinated” and pledging to changes to the curriculum.
The Liberal leader had previously backed concerns about a “woke agenda” in schools and pledged in his budget reply speech to “restore” a curriculum focused on “critical thinking, responsible citizenship and common sense”.
Dutton had also floated placing a “condition” on funding to ensure kids weren’t “guided by some sort of an agenda that’s come out of universities”.
During the election debate on Channel Seven five days ago, the opposition leader had also said “We need to stop the teaching of some of the curriculum that says that our children should be ashamed of being Australian.”
But just two days out from election day, Dutton at a press conference in Brisbane downplayed any changes to come from the Coalition.
“We don’t have any proposals,” he said, when asked what the Coalition might change in the curriculum.
The education minister, Jason Clare, said on Thursday the current national curriculum had been put in place by the Morrison government and would be reviewed as a matter of course in the next parliament.
“Peter Dutton will want you to think that Adam Bandt wrote the curriculum. In fact, the Liberal party wrote the curriculum,” he said.
“In the normal course of events, what happens is the curriculum gets reviewed and the curriculum, the national curriculum, will get reviewed in the next term of parliament.”
In the first week of the campaign, Dutton was asked at a Sky News forum in his electorate of Dickson about what the Coalition would do to combat “the woke agenda” in education.
Dutton didn’t use the word “woke”, as the questioner did, but responded that the federal government could “influence” state governments about what schools taught.
“We do provide funding to the state governments and we can condition that funding,” Dutton said.
“We should be saying to the states … that we want our kids to be taught the curriculum … not be guided into some sort of an agenda that’s come out of universities,” he said.
“That’s a debate that we need to hear more from parents on. I think there is a silent majority on this issue right across the community.”
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Asked about the idea of conditioning funding based on the curriculum, Dutton did not re-endorse that idea.
“What we’ll do is we’ll work with parents to reflect what they want to see in the education system, and that is a good education for their children,” he said.
The Coalition campaign headquarters has been contacted for comment.
The shadow education minister, Sarah Henderson, had flagged on the ABC at the beginning of April there would be “more to say” on the curriculum during the campaign.
She has repeatedly declined Guardian Australia requests for an interview for further information, but instead she provided a statement which contrasted with Dutton’s strong language that “classrooms should be for education, not indoctrination”.
Henderson said the Coalition was “strongly focused on getting back to basics to raise education standards in our schools”, pointing to declining Naplan proficiency in literacy, maths and science.
Earlier this month, Clare wrote to schools groups, claiming a Coalition government could “use funding as a lever to determine what students in non-government schools are taught”.
Additional reporting by Caitlin Cassidy
